


each kiss to lip and cheek

by mosttroubledbird (howlikeagod)



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: M/M, Oral Sex, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, juno steel deserves thorough and attentive blowjobs and i know JUST the man to give 'em to him, post Juno Steel and the Soul of the People Part 2, season 2 finale spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-30
Updated: 2019-01-30
Packaged: 2019-10-19 07:14:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,104
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17596817
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/howlikeagod/pseuds/mosttroubledbird
Summary: A spaceship; a quiet corner; a pair of celestial bodies.





	each kiss to lip and cheek

**Author's Note:**

> do NOT read this if you haven't heard Juno Steel and the Soul of the People Part 2!! both because spoilers and because it's poetic podcasting you need to put in your ears right this second.
> 
> title from Almost (Sweet Music) by Hozier

* * *

 

“Juno,” he says.

Juno’s eye flicks to his face and doesn’t waver. Still steady—a sharpshooter’s eye, despite everything. The simmering intent in him flares hot and lends an extra jolt of desperation when his hand lands on Juno’s shoulder.

The tight corridor of the ship is empty. He knew it would be when he ran into Juno here; he would not be himself if he did not know the hidden corners, the rough patterns of life the rest of the crew have fallen into.

Juno moves with the pressure, stepping back as he steps forward. His feet land where Juno’s were a moment ago, slides a leg between his like a practiced dance, until Juno’s back gently collides with the smooth metal wall of the alcove where a storage unit used to be.

They are outside the view of the security cameras, around a corner from either entrance to the hallway.

The engines rumble quietly through the walls; they are not quite so far out in the star-dusted sky, then, as to escape the weight of gravity from the celestial bodies around them.

There is only one celestial body he is interested in at the moment. He smiles to himself at the thought, knowing Juno would find the sentiment unbearably sappy. He leans in, lips grazing the stubble on Juno’s jaw.

Juno breathes out in that low, rough voice—he has ached to hear it again for a year and then some, having had a taste and finding himself suddenly deprived. He presses his teeth against Juno’s skin.

“Nureyev,” Juno groans.

Nureyev freezes— _Nureyev._ It is a shift to think of himself as Peter Nureyev again. The name was a secret; then it was a weakness; then, for the year of his life when the word _lonely_ meant something to him, it was the knife in his back. He still treads carefully around the edges of it, the place where the same thing has been torn out and returned again twice.

This time, he intends to let it heal. Juno does, too—Peter Nureyev knows this much. He has always trusted Juno Steel. He has always had his reasons.

The warm breath in Nureyev’s ear turns to a questioning sound. Juno puts a hand on his face—reaches out, touches _him_ like it costs him nothing—and moves him far enough away to meet his eyes.

The folly of a man afraid of his own name is too complicated, too entire to bother Juno with right now. Nureyev turns into the skin of his palm against his cheek and presses his mouth to it. His tongue traces a line there—life line, he thinks. A former name from a scant few years into his career was a hobbyist of ancient Terran superstitions of that nature: palmistry, cartomancy, quantum mechanics. He has lost most of the trivia, but the shape of it lives where all his fabricated selves live, like ghosts in the mansion of his mind.

Juno shivers. His other arm wraps around Nureyev’s waist, pulls him close enough to feel the whole solid weight of his body. It’s comforting; it’s the closest thing to _home_ a single place or moment has ever been.

Nureyev closes his lips around the joint of Juno’s thumb. He means to draw it out, perhaps take Juno’s fingers into his mouth and make a performance of himself.

Juno doesn’t give him the opportunity, and Nureyev is more than fine with that.

The hand at his mouth pulls away and wraps around the back of his head. Nureyev is pulled down and kissed so thoroughly he nearly forgets he isn’t the one pushed against the wall. Juno’s lips are always chapped, even more so in the recycled air of the ship. His tongue is insistent; his hands are so strong and steady on Nureyev’s nape and lower back.

In the void of space, simulated gravity keeps one’s feet on the ground and one’s blood where it should be, but there is a reason it takes a bit to get land-legs back after a long voyage.

In Juno’s arms, Peter Nureyev feels as though he is standing on the firmest terrestrial planet in the galaxy.

He lets his own hands wander, across the firm plane of Juno’s chest and down his back, over the curve of his ass, tight against the softness of his waist. He has a year of kisses to make up for, after all, and the casual touches that have preoccupied him since he first set eyes on a hungover Martian detective.

Juno is none of those things at the moment. Nureyev’s heart near bursts every time he looks at the Juno with him now and remembers the Juno he met so long ago. The one he leans against and presses to the wall in this moment is a Juno Steel who cares for his own wellbeing; there is no more fervent daydream of Nureyev’s than that.

Well. On the whole, this is true, but in the microcosm of this alcove there is a _wanting_ that has rattled in his mind for quite some time.

“Juno,” Nureyev gasps again. His lips are tingling and swollen; Juno’s are plump and wet in front of him. Too distracting. He can’t help but leave another kiss on his mouth before he finishes the thought. “I—May I?”

“What?” Juno asks. His eye is unfocused; he chases Nureyev’s mouth and Nureyev gives in to the pursuit again.

Then, he pushes Juno’s hips firmly back against the wall and goes down to his knees.

“Oh,” Juno says. Then, “Wait. Are you wearing knee pads?”

Nureyev shifts slightly; the sound of padded plastic against the metal floor is just barely audible over the ship’s engine.

“It never hurts to be prepared,” he says, and winks. “These floors are murder on the joints, Juno.”

“I— Oh my god.” Juno smiles down at him. His hand runs through Nureyev’s hair— _fondly,_ unmistakably fond. “You’re an idiot.”

“I’m a pragmatist.”

“You’re really not.”

“We’ll agree to disagree.”

Nureyev tosses mussed hair out of his eyes and presses in to Juno’s hips. He runs his cheek over the swell in his trousers, runs his hands down the front of Juno’s thighs. Juno’s breathing, above him, has gone shakey again; the hand in his hair flexes.

“Are you gonna—?” Juno asks after a minute of clothed caresses. Nureyev palms him and he hisses quietly. “I thought shoving me into a corner meant quick and dirty.”

“Now, why would you think a thing like that?”

“That’s usually what it means.” Juno puts the hand not in Nureyev’s hair against the button of his pants.

“I am a unique specimen,” Nureyev says, laying his hand over Juno’s. “And _you_ are worth taking my time on.”

“C’mon,” Juno grunts. Then, when Nureyev’s fingers guide Juno away from his fly, _“Please.”_

Peter Nureyev grins.

He undoes Juno’s pants but keeps his underwear in place. There is a damp patch right at the level of Nureyev’s mouth, though he knows it wasn’t his mouth that made it. Juno moans again at the blunt pressure of a tongue over his cock, of a hand slipping into his pants to press gentle fingers up behind his balls.

It takes so little to get Juno worked up; Nureyev has known this nearly as long as he’s known the lady. Touch-starved and sensitive—though, thankfully, much less the former these days—is Juno Steel.

It’s gorgeous; it’s a challenge worthy of Nureyev’s talents to take him slowly and wring him out.

His skin buzzes with secondhand pleasure. The little noises drifting out of Juno fall over him like touch. This is the intimacy he’d always known they could have: trust in one another’s hands, a steady climb, Juno wrapping a lock of Nureyev’s hair gently around his fingers.

Nureyev moans, too, at the feeling of Juno playing with his hair. Not pulling, even, but touching soft strands like every part of his body is worth its weight in gold.

It’s enough, he thinks. Nureyev is himself eager to taste Juno again, and it feels less like shifting into gear and more an organic extension of the world of this moment to pull Juno’s underwear down and take him into his mouth.

Nureyev works Juno thoroughly, pulling him deep and pulling away to a rhythm as slow as the lifespan of stars. Juno’s pants fall to the floor eventually; his boxer-briefs end up around his calves. Nureyev looks up to see him braced against either side of the alcove, palms flat against the metal walls and biceps shaking.

The soft weight of his ass in Nureyev’s hands feels as right as anything ever has. The slick sounds of Nureyev’s mouth around his cock, the long, slow glide of it, are lost to the empty corridor and the engine and the mounting whimpers in Juno’s voice.

He twitches and gasps; the muscles of his ass flex under Nureyev’s hands.

When Nureyev pulls off, Juno groans like a ship struggling for escape velocity. Nureyev’s lips and chin are wet; he has to swallow before he speaks.

“Do you want to come in my mouth?” he asks.

Juno stares as if, until this moment, he had completely forgotten the concept of human speech.

“Yeah,” he huffs when his brain seemingly turns back on. “Uh-huh.” The latter part is a whimper, an inarticulate plea when Nureyev takes Juno into him once again.

Careful planning is Peter Nureyev’s strong suit. He had planned to meet Juno in just this corner of the ship, he had planned to be on his knees, and he had planned for the unselfconscious volume of Juno’s voice when he comes.

Planning does not equal preparedness; Nureyev is still—now and always, maybe forever, he hopes more than anything to test the hypothesis—bowled over by the sounds pouring out of him. He cherishes Juno in a way that goes beyond covetousness, beyond simple wanting.

It is his folly; he is so very grateful for it.

Juno fills his mouth and Peter swallows, runs his tongue over the head of his cock, chases the taste of him. Juno pants and groans. He runs his shaking hands through Peter’s hair. Palms cup the back of Nureyev’s head as Juno slips from his mouth. He looks up to see him half naked and sweating, face open, still gasping for air—a sight to behold.

There is no hope for subtlety in the aftermath of this, Peter thinks. He stands up, pulls a handkerchief from his pocket, wipes his mouth, and offers a clean one to Juno.

“Thanks,” Juno says. He leans back and lets his head _thunk_ quietly against the wall.

“Any time.” He kisses Juno’s face, again and again, not urging or searching for anything; he does it simply because he enjoys it. His cheeks are far from soft or smooth, but his face is warm and he is Juno Steel. That is enough reason on its own to shower him in kisses, in Peter’s humble opinion.

Juno leans into the stamp of Peter’s mouth, sighing deep from his chest. An arm drapes warmly around Peter’s shoulders; he’s clingy and soft in the aftermath. Peter intends to pull him into bed and hold him there for hours as soon as he’s decent.

Speaking of which.

“I should,” Juno gestures awkwardly, then bends down to pull up his pants. “Dammit. I was on my way to talk to Buddy about something, she told me not to be late again—”

“Oh,” Peter says, as if he is remembering by sheer coincidence, “she had to reschedule. She sent me to tell you, in fact.”

Juno falls forward into Peter’s chest, laughing quietly. His arms come up around his torso; Peter returns the gesture in kind.

“Looks like I have some time to kill, huh?”

“I believe it does,” Peter agrees. “How _ever_ shall you spend it?”

Juno looks up, chin resting against Peter’s sternum, and meets his gaze with an eye full of heat and mischief. The ignored ache in Peter’s trousers makes itself known, twitching with the corner of Juno’s smile.

“I can think of a few ways.”

Juno grabs Peter’s hand in his, pulling him bodily out of the alcove and down the corridor.

“Juno,” he says. “This isn’t the way to sleeping quarters.”

“I know.” Juno leans confidently against the stairway railing, leading down to storage and the engine room. “There’s a hell of a lot of ship left to christen, Nureyev. Unless you’re busy.”

“No,” Peter says, smile slowly spreading across his face. “My evening is wide open.”


End file.
